Question

After eating lettuce that was past its expiration date, you contracted food (salmonella) poisonings. You were up all night vomiting. Now you feel nauseated whenever you see lettuce. What is the conditioned stimulus?

Answer 1

`\bold{ANSWER:}`

The conditioned stimulus in this scenario would be the lettuce itself.

In classical conditioning, the conditioned stimulus (CS) is the previously neutral stimulus that becomes associated with the unconditioned stimulus (US) and elicits a conditioned response (CR) after the conditioning process.

In this case, the lettuce initially had no effect on you, but after experiencing food poisoning (the unconditioned stimulus), you developed an association between the lettuce and feeling sick.

As a result, the lettuce now serves as the conditioned stimulus that triggers the conditioned response of feeling nauseated.